


in the garden

by Red



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Absence, Canon Compliant, Darkest Timeline, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Old Age, Pre-Days of Future Past Timeline, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:04:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4165056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red/pseuds/Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's little left for Erik to do against the constant threat of the Sentinels. Wandering one day in an city long-abandoned, he finds himself in a familiar park.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pocky_slash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/gifts).
  * Inspired by [lost in a city](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3975154) by [pocky_slash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash). 



Under the heavy downpouring of mid-June rain, the faint noise of a lock scraping open and of circuitry being dismantled is all but inaudible. 

It’s inelegant, tedious work, his powers only useful against the doors of the warehouse. Despite the fact that Erik spent most his time in solitary in the decades since the sentinels were invented, the manufacturers still remained loathe to introduce metal to their design. 

All things being equal, Erik would have preferred to raze the city, or at least this single building. As it is, he finishes his work well after nightfall. A pathetic show of tampering, for all it’s worth. He is at most a minor inconvenience; a thimble of water, he thinks tiredly, in a world utterly aflame.

After he locks the warehouse, he walks aimlessly for hours. The downpour continues on, soaking through his coat and trailing icy down his neck. Paying more attention to remaining in the shadows than the turns he’s taking, he keeps on, though it isn’t long before his knees and hips are in agony. 

He’s far too old to be doing this, old enough now that he’s gone soft and careless. When he finds a bench nearly obscured by overgrowth, he gives in to the demands of his body and stops.

Pulling his coat in closer, he closes his eyes, trying to ignore the dull ache of his joints. St. Louis, he thinks. It’s been nearly a half-century, and the entire city--if one could even call it a city still, barren as it is of _uncollared_ sentient life--has changed so much. 

After an age, he shifts and looks around. It dawns on him suddenly where he’s found himself. Impossible as it is he’s been here, sitting in this exact space, before. 

The land around it is now overgrown with tangling plants, a useless density of ivies and knotweed, species brought here by humans and thriving after they've gone. 

A dismal end for what had once been a dismal enough garden. Back then, there’d at least been paint on the bench. There’d been small plots of tomatoes and peas, the smell of earth recently toiled mixing with lingering smoke from the bar. There’d been the racket of humanity still all around him, then: out on late-night strolls, or heading home, or wandering in and out of the bar that had been nearby. 

Back then, for all he had cared, the city could’ve been just as empty as it is today. He stares at the cracks in the wood, the vacant space at his side. He’d been foolish, yes. Completely heedless of where they were, of the time, of the city around them--heedless of anyone, of anything beyond Charles. 

He doesn’t regret it. How could he? Remembering that night, Charles grinning and flushed with drink, the way his hair still curled messy around his nape and the angle of his throat as he laughed… It’s not as if Erik had any choice in the matter. Charles was always something like lightning, a brightness that omitted all else, that pulled at some fundamental part of Erik’s being. 

1962, and he felt old, then. He lets his hand rest on the bench, freezing and wet. He had felt so old, sure that he’d thwarted death too long as it was. For years, all he had seen ahead of him had been death, Schmidt’s and his own. And though he can’t remember Charles doing anything at all differently that day--it had just been another failed recruiting trip, another excuse to stay and have a few more drinks, suffering yet another one of those jokes that Charles alone found so amusing--Erik could never forget how shattering it felt, the sudden unfolding of a different future. A world ahead of him that would, perhaps, be more favorable. Less hopeless than he’d anticipated, with Charles by his side. The two of them together, he had thought, were unstoppable. 

Charles’s lips had been so warm, but still; his mind had pulsed with that delight he had, his joy at the novelty of being surprised. They had kissed before then, of course. That and more, in every hotel room they shared since Boston. But here, on this very bench--this is where he first kissed Charles in front of the world.

 _The world that would be ours_ , he had thought. He hadn’t given a damn if anyone saw. What were they, against Charles? And Charles, so quickly, had kissed him back, had gripped his hands tight against the leather jacket Erik was wearing then. When they parted, Charles’s lips had been even redder, and Erik had wanted nothing more than to kiss him again. 

His hand clenches against the wood. 

To this day, he wants nothing more.

For a moment longer, he remains. The rain pelts on around him, his coat heavy against his back. Every minute he stays here, he’s only tempting what is surely his eventual fate. The inevitable only grows closer yet, he has no illusions there. This world isn’t theirs. It no longer belongs to either humans or mutants, and what he can accomplish alone is pitiful. A strike at a lab here, altering a shipment of parts there--the sentinels become more refined, more deadly yet. 

Erik has no doubt, anything he does is mere futility. Dying in a final raid that might buy a handful of mutants a precious few final hours of freedom, that’s the most he can hope for, now. A slight improvement, but one nonetheless, he thinks, smirking to himself; an old man laughing at his own jokes in the dark. 

_I told you it would end this way_ , he says, silently. It’s a message that goes to no one, though his mental voice is far more refined than it was that night, when his intoxication brushed clumsy against Charles’s own. 

His projection is no less powerful than when he saw Charles last. An old man, he thinks once more, laughing at his own jokes, forever talking to himself--he knows, with a tired certainty, that these words aren’t like his physical ones. He may rarely speak aloud, but his projected voice will never grow rusty from disuse.

Slowly, in deference to the cold, he stands. 

Erik starts winding his way through the streets. These days, he’s loathe to use even an iota of his power unless strictly necessary; losing his powers once was more than time enough. While ignoring his sense of the magnetic grid does make navigation somewhat more challenging, it’s not as if he hasn’t spent years in travel. His innate sense of direction is far more sophisticated than mere reliance upon his powers. 

The buildings are soon unfamiliar, the shape and pull of iron and steel strange enough that there’s no way he passed them before. He keeps walking, hunched against the needling rain, his internal countdown to the next sweep of the sentinels urging him on. 

And if he should question the route, or the odd beacon luring him north, well… there’s not enough time, and he’s loathe to give this up. He may be an old fool, but it feels a rare gift, something long ago lost: a direction in which to go.


End file.
